Fine-Tuning of the Universe (part 6 of 8): How Can We Explain
Fine-Tuning?

Fine-Tuning of the Universe (part 6 of 8): How Can We Explain
Fine-Tuning?

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Description:Fine-tuning and design are two separate ideas. We will
discuss all possible explanations for fine-tuning and see that divine creation
is the only reasonable choice acknowledged even by some atheists.

To many people the evidence of fine-tuning immediately
suggests divine creation as the explanation. Even some atheists, at times,
could not resist admitting this commonsense interpretation. Theoretical
physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies wrote, ‘The impression of
design is overwhelming.’[1] After
discovering one of the first cases of fine-tuning, the late astrophysicist,
Fred Hoyle declared, ‘A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that
a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and
biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The
numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this
conclusion almost beyond question.’[2]

Nevertheless, to exhaust all explanations, first, we
will separate two words: fine-tuning and design. Second, we will apply mutually
exhaustive causal explanations to eliminate the least likely possibilities to
pick the best one.

Fine-tuning is a neutral term that says nothing how to
explain it. It just means that the range of values of constants and initial
conditions of the universe at the time of the Big Bang were extremely narrow
and the physical laws are precisely set. If the values of even one of these
constants or initial conditions were changed by the breadth of a hair, there
would be no life in the universe today. The delicate balance required for life
would have been upset.

Next, let us explore all other possible explanations of
fine-tuning:

Universe is Self-Explanatory

Some say the universe is its own explanation, i.e. it
is self-explanatory.[3]

Don’t worry if you don’t understand what it means
because the idea contradicts itself. It is logically impossible for a cause to
bring about an effect without being in existence. John Lennox observes, ‘Attempts
to argue that the universe is self-explanatory turn out to be as
self-contradictory as the simple acceptance of a beginning as a brute fact is
unsatisfactory.’[4]

Necessity

‘Necessity’ means that the constants and quantities must
have the values they do. But, why does the universe has to permit life? Why do
the constants and initial conditions have to be what they are?

There are no good answers to these questions, therefore,
physical necessity is implausible since there is no evidence that
life-permitting universes are necessary.

As a matter of fact, life-prohibiting universes are more
likely than a life-permitting universe. As Paul Davies wrote, "It
seems, then, that the physical universe does not have to be the way it is: it
could have been otherwise."[5]

Universe Was Either Created by Physical Laws or Was
Self-Generated

If a cake cannot generate itself, how can a universe
generate itself? It is hard to believe, but some atheists suggest that the
universe was brought into existence by a theory, or laws of physics, or
mathematics.[6]

First, ascribing intelligence to mathematical laws and
believing they could be intelligent is non-sense.

Second, explanations of physical phenomenon like the
rising of the sun from the East with laws of physics are descriptive and
predictive, but not creative. Who created these laws? Newton’s law of
gravitation does not create gravity or cause anything to happen.
Replace the universe with a jet engine. Will we say someone made it for a
specific purpose or shall we dismiss the agent who made it and say the jet
engine arose naturally from the physical laws? This will be absurd. God does
not compete or conflict with the laws of physics as an explanation. Laws of
physics can explain how the jet engine works, but not how it came about in the
first place.[7] Lennox
put it well in one of his lectures, ‘nonsense remains nonsense even if talked
by famous scientists.’

Chance or Brute Force?

Could the fine-tuning be due to chance? Could it be an
accident that all constants and initial conditions just fell into the range
that allows life? The problem is that the chances of a life-permitting universe
to exist are so remote that this alternative becomes unreasonable. No
respectable physicist (including atheists), believes that fine-tuning can be
explained by pure chance.

Someone might ask, "when does something become so
improbable that it becomes impossible?" Williams Dembski, a mathematician,
attempted to answer the question in his book, The Design Inference. You
consider the number of particles in the universe and you also consider
the number of seconds in the universe, which he places at 1025. Then
he multiplies this by 1045 as the number of events, or reactions,
that could take place per second. On this basis, he arrives at a probability
which is one half times one out of 10150. Anything that falls
beyond that probability bound, he says, is not different from impossibility.

Furthermore, the objection is answered with an
illustration given by John Leslie.[8] Let
us say you are dragged in front of a firing squad of 100 trained shooters
standing at point-blank. You hear ‘Ready! Aim! Fire!’ You then hear the
sound of guns, but, amazingly, you are still alive! Did all the 100 shooters
miss? What conclusion will you reach?

Would you say, ‘guess I shouldn’t be surprised they all
missed! After all, had they not missed, I would not be here! There is nothing
more to explain!’

No person in their right mind will accept this
explanation. In light of the enormous improbability that all shooters
missed, a reasonable conclusion will be they all missed on purpose.

Footnotes:

[1]
Davies, Paul. 1988. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s
Creative Ability To Order the Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster. 203.

[6]
‘The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot
answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to
describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the
unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it
need a Creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe?’
(Hawking, Stephen. 1998. A Brief History of Time, From the Big Bang to
Black Holes. London: Bantam. 174)

‘There is no need to invoke anything supernatural in
the origins of the universe or of life. I have never liked the idea of divine
tinkering: for me it is much more inspiring to believe that a set of
mathematical laws can be so clever as to bring all these things into being.’ Paul
Davies reported by Cookson, Clive. 1995. Scientists Who Glimpsed God. Financial
Times, April 29, p.20.

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